Reply to Dong et al., 2014, JCLEPRO, 84, 59–69

This letter to the editors aims to critically respond to the article “Salient stakeholders in corporate social responsibility reporting by Chinese mining and minerals companies” by Dong, Burritt, and Qian (Journal of Cleaner Production, 84, 59–69; 2014). The authors apply the concept of stakeholder salience to the previously neglected Chinese context. Two major shortcomings of Dong et al.’s paper are discussed. First, the measures used for the salience attributes do not correspond to their theoretical foundations made by the original authors. Second, Dong, et al. apparently use the dependent variable as predictor for the independent variable in their multivariate regressions which violates the logic and direction of this method. Taken together, these arguments question the validity of the results about the salience of particular stakeholder groups for Chinese mining and minerals companies. I recommend to apply the concept of stakeholder salience more rigorously, and I urge Dong et al. to reconsider both theoretical and methodological approaches in their study.